Biological and Biomedical Science
 DMS Home  /  About DMS  /  Current Student Resources  /  Contact Us  /  Search 

Susan M. Dymecki

Department of Genetics
Harvard Medical School
New Research Building, Room 358d
77 Avenue Louis Pasteur
Boston, MA 02115
Tel: (617) 432-7618
Fax: (617) 432-7595
Email: dymecki@genetics.med.harvard.edu
Web Page: The Dymecki Lab Page
4 postdoctoral fellows, 2 graduate students, 2 technicians

The step by step differentiation of embryonic cells into different types of neurons lays the foundation for our sensory responses, motor commands, and cognitive behaviors. Our research explores this exquisite differentiation program in mammals using a combination of genetic, embryological, and molecular biological methods. While the generation of such neural diversity is a complex process culminating in the most sophisticated of wiring circuits, one simplifying approach is to start by tracking the specification, differentiation, and migration paths taken by specific sets of cells originating from primitive neuroectoderm. Towards this goal, our lab has generated a variety of recombinase-based tools to study progenitor-progeny cell relationships in the mouse. We are applying these and other molecular genetic and genomic tools to study programs underlying the proper anatomical and functional patterning of neuronal assemblies in the brain stem, paying particular attention to development of the precerebellar system (with its central role in movement control and sensorimotor transformations), the serotonergic system (with its involvement in such disparate functions as sleep, arousal, homeostasis, pain, and depression), and the choroid plexus (as an organizing/patterning center during embryogenesis and as the source of cerebral spinal fluid).

 

References:

  • Dymecki, S.M. and Kim, J. Molecular Neuroanatomy’s ‘Three Gs’: A Primer. (2007) Neuron 54:17-34. 
  • Farago, A.F., Awatramani, R., and Dymecki, S. M., (2006) Assembly of the Brainstem Cochlear Nuclear Complex is Revealed by Intersectional and Subtractive Genetic Fate Maps. Neuron 50:205-218.
  • Landsberg, R.L., Awatramani, R. B., Hunter, N.L., Farago, A.F., DiPietrantoio, H.J., and Dymecki, S.M., (2005) Hindbrain Rhombic Lip is Comprised of Discrete Progenitor Cell Populations Allocated by Pax6. Neuron 48:933-947.
  • Awatramani, R, Soriano, P, Rodriguez, C. Mai, J, and Dymecki, S. Cryptic Boundaries in Roof Plate and Choroid Plexus Revealed by Intersectional Gene Activation. Nature Genetics 2003; 35:70-75.